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The bus is travelling to the left, because the door is not shown, which then must be on the other (right) side of the bus. Except in England and those other countries where the traffic goes to the other direction of course. In those countries the bus would be going to the right.

Here is a puzzle, which is a wee bit more difficult. In fact, I think of it as the neatest, most elegant puzzle I ran across. Susan, if you wish, you can put it up as a separate blog entry.———————————Joe and Jack are talking.Joe tells Jack:“I have three children. I want you to find out their ages. I am going to give you clues. Stop me (from giving more clues) if you got the solution. Jack agrees. Joe gives the first clue:

The sum of their ages is 13

Jack is thinking a bit and tells Joe to give the next clue. And so he does:

The product of their ages is the same as your age (and points to Jack)

Jack is thinking a bit and tells Joe to give the next clue. And so he does:

My oldest son is 63 pounds

Jack yells: STOP, I got it.

And he did. Did you?

The task of course is to figure out the ages of the three sons of Jack WITH explanation. Anyone can whip up three numbers which add up to 13. The solution is more than that. You have to prove, why THAT three numbers and not any other three numbers which add up to 13.

Despite that seemingly there is no solution, I can assure everybody, that there is a solution, and it is specific and logical.

A teacher was reading her class the story of Chicken Little. After reading the part where Chicken Little tells the farmer the sky is falling she asks, “So what do you think the farmer said when Chicken Little told him the sky is falling?” Little Suzie, a student, raised her hand and said, “Oh my God! A talking chicken!”

The problem with the Jack’s age was that two possible combinations were giving the same product:

2, 2, 9 and

6, 6, 1 = 36

Therefore Jack must be 36 y.o. Otherwise all other combinations give unique product and Jack would have found the solution, if let say the combination was 1, 5, 7. The trick here is that we don’t know the Jack’s age, but he knows it. So any combination that was matching his age would have let him tell the ages of the boys after the 2nd question.

The third question would have been needed only if the age of Jack is 36 and two combinations match that number.

The third question is needed to figure out which of the combinations is the correct one. Since there is an oldest son, then the combination is 2, 2, 9.

And I still don’t know the answer of the problem about the bus. If we say the bus is going to left, because there is no door, then we assume that the picture is very accurate and shows all details.

If the picture is detailed enough to know that there is no door, why is not it showing a driver inside. The bus must be stopped then. Why is the bus symmetric? Every bus has different front and end. Therefore the picture is not detailed, it is just a sketch. But then we cannot say why is the door missing, because this is the other side of the bus or the sketch is just incomplete.

Gabors puzzle still doesn’t work.He said the oldest son is 63 stone.The two kids that are age 6 could be twins.The oldest is the one who was born first.In todays age, there are a lot of overweight kids and people with twins do joke about their “oldest”. A friend of mine has twins who are “a year apart”. One born on new years eve, one born several minutes later on new years day.

If all the pre-school children got it right, and there’s nothing to say it’s going left or right, it must be going straight ahead or away from the observer. I say Straight ahead, and those are the front lights, with the ‘South Park’ two side doors. lol

There is no single solution to the puzzle as presented because we can rationalize any set of numbers, since you NEVER gave us Jack’s age.Jack’s age could be anything. An example:Boys: 1, 5, 7. Jack is 35.Boys: 2, 4, 7. Jack is 56.Least age has to be 1,1,11 which leads to Jack being 11. Can’t be aged 0, as that leads Jack to be 0 too.Please find a better puzzle.If you are the same anon, you further wrote:

Gabors puzzle still doesn’t work.He said the oldest son is 63 stone.

I said 63 pounds. But it is all irrelevant (the weight)

A friend of mine has twins who are “a year apart”. One born on new years eve, one born several minutes later on new years day.

Now that you saw that others solved the puzzle, trying to find “explanations” why you didn’t.

The puzzle is perfect. The solution goes EXACTLY as “i love chopin” wrote it down.

This puzzle requires a bit more than average intelligence. Which includes the realization, once figuring out that Jack must be 36 years old and that’s why he couldn’t tell the ages of the three sons after the second clue (because we didn’t know how old he is, but he did!), and because of that the three sons can be only 6,6,1 or 9,2,2, that it wouldn’t be a puzzle, unless 9,2,2 is the solution based on the third clue, the reference the THE oldest son. True, even twins are born a minute or so apart, but once you realize the logic structure of the puzzle, you can freely ignore that and settle for the 9,2,2 answer.

I would have accepted your reaction, if it was something like this:”well….Jack is 36 years old, Joe’s sons could be 9,2,2 or 6,6,1, but since even the 6,6,1 yields an “oldest son”, the answer remains ambigous. But you know what? If you would have gotten to that point, you wouldn’t have called the puzzle ambigous 🙂

the age puzzle is interesting but flawed.Good point about the fraternal twins.Of course it could even be worse if it was a 9 year old girl and an exceptional overweight 2 year old 😉

It is a cute puzzle, but if it has that many flaws it is far from brilliant. It is a good twist to have to recognize that Jack knows his age.

How about this, speaking of age. A man walks into an office and the receptionist who he has never met greets him and asks him his name. After he gives his name, the receptionist leaves, comes back and then wishes the man a happy birthday. It was his birthday. How did the receptionist know?

I showed my children this puzzle. The 2 preschool children said it was going right. The school-age children said left. So I assume the correct answer is right, but I can’t see why. All that nonsense about doors seems totally beside the point. [I live in the UK, by the way, and my children hardly ever see buses except in books]

“How about this, speaking of age. A man walks into an office and the receptionist who he has never met greets him and asks him his name. After he gives his name, the receptionist leaves, comes back and then wishes the man a happy birthday. It was his birthday. How did the receptionist know? “

In the old times people were not sending birthday cards, but telegrams. It was a normal situation an old man to go to the post office, because they informed him that there was a telegram for him. After asking for his name, the clerk would go find the telegram and eventually read it for the old man, because in the old time many old men could not read. So, if the telegram was saying “Happy Birthday!” this would be a possible answer to the puzzle.

Well, I am sure this was not the answer you were looking for, but at least you get the idea about how old I am, if I remember these times 🙂